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Electricity from chicken feathers

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The food industry generates enormous amounts of waste and by-products.  Each year, 40 million tons of chicken feathers are incinerated, causing adverse environmental effects.  Not only does it release large amounts of carbon dioxide but also produces toxic gases such as sulfur dioxide.

Researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed a way to put chicken feathers to good use by using them to make fuel cells more cost-effective and sustainable.

Using a simple and environmentally friendly process, they extract the keratin from the feathers.  Keratin is the protein that helps form hair, nails, the outer layer of skin, and feathers.  The extracted keratin is then converted into ultra-fine fibers known as amyloid fibrils.  The keratin fibrils are used in the membrane of a fuel cell.

Fuel cells generate clean energy from hydrogen and oxygen with only heat and water as byproducts.  At the heart of every fuel cell is a semipermeable membrane that allows protons to pass through but blocks electrons, thereby producing an electric current.  Fuel cells are the primary way hydrogen is used to directly generate electricity.  Hydrogen cars run on fuel cells.

Conventional fuel cells typically use membranes made from highly toxic chemicals.  The new ETH membranes essentially replace these toxic substances with biological keratin. 

The researchers are investigating how stable and durable their keratin membrane is and to improve it if necessary.  The team has already applied for a joint patent and is looking for partners and investors to further develop the technology and bring it to market.

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Generating clean electricity with chicken feathers

Photo, posted July 10, 2016, courtesy of Matthew Bellemare via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Moisture swing carbon capture

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As the world grapples with limiting the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, there is a growing need to capture the carbon dioxide that is emitted as well as preventing it from being emitted in the first place.  Carbon capture can be accomplished at the source of emissions (such as power plants) or it can be done by taking it out of the atmosphere.  The latter is called “direct air capture”.

It is not at all clear whether direct air capture can be accomplished on a scale that would really make a difference and at an acceptable cost either in dollars or energy expended.  But if it can be done that way, it would be a major tool in combatting climate change.

Direct air capture technology generally makes use of sorbent materials whose capacity to capture carbon dioxide and later release it is a function of temperature.  The process requires significant amounts of energy to release the carbon dioxide that has been captured. 

New research from Northwestern University makes use of the “moisture-swing” technique which uses materials whose ability to capture and release carbon dioxide depends on humidity rather than temperature.  While it takes some amount of energy to humidify the volume of air containing the sorbent material, it is very small compared to temperature-driven systems. 

There are many groups working with moisture-swing technology, but the Northwestern Group has identified a number of new sorbent materials with superior properties.

The fundamental questions of scalability and cost remain, but moisture-swing is a promising approach to direct air capture.  If carbon dioxide can be pulled out of the atmosphere in large volumes, it can be concentrated and stored or converted into useful products.

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Pulling carbon dioxide right out of the air

Photo, posted May 15, 2020, courtesy of James Watt via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Paper Cups Are Not So Great | Earth Wise

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The environmental cost of plastic waste is a highly visible global issue.  The response has been a growing effort to replace plastic items with alternative materials.  One very visible change of this sort has been the replacement of plastic cups with paper cups at coffee shops.  But a new study at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden has found that this solution has problems of its own.

Researchers studied the effects of disposable cups in the environment on the larvae of the butterfly mosquito.  They placed disposable cups made from different materials in wet sediment and water for a few days and observed how the chemicals leached from the cups affected the growth of the larvae.  It turned out that all of the different kinds of cups had negative effects.  The concern is not specifically about mosquito larvae; it is the fact that more environmentally friendly drinking cups are still potentially harmful to living things.

Paper is neither fat nor water resistant, so paper cups need to be treated with a surface coating.  The most common coating is polylactide, which is a type of bioplastic.  It is generally considered to be biodegradable, but the study shows that it can still be toxic.  Bioplastics still contain many different chemicals and the potential toxicity of each of them is not well known.

The UN is trying to develop a binding agreement by the world’s countries to end the spread of plastics in society and nature.  For such an agreement to be effective, the plastics industry will need to clearly report what chemicals all products contain, including such mostly invisible products as the coating on paper drinking cups.

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Paper cups are just as toxic as plastic cups

Photo, posted October 23, 2016, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Recycling Solar Panels | Earth Wise

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Solar panels generally have a useful life of around 20 to 25 years.  The great majority of deployed panels have been installed fairly recently, so they have a long way to go.  But the growth in solar technology dates back to the 1990s, so there are growing number of panels that have already or are shortly coming to their end-of-life.

Today, roughly 90% of solar panels that have lost their efficiency due to age, or that are defective, end up in landfills because recycling them is too expensive.  Nevertheless, solar panels contain valuable materials, including silver, copper, and crystalline silicon, as well as lower-value aluminum and glass. 

The rapid growth of solar technology means that in the coming years, large numbers of retired solar panels will enter the waste stream.  The area covered by solar panels that are due to be retired by 2030 in the U.S. alone would cover about 3,000 football fields.  Clearly, more cost-effective recycling methods are sorely needed.

Engineers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia have developed a new, more effective way of recycling solar panels that can recover silver at high efficiency.  The panel frames and glass are removed leaving just the solar cells themselves.  The cells are then crushed and sieved in a vibration container that effectively separates 99% of the materials contained in them.

Silver is the most valuable material contained in solar cells.  The Australian researchers estimate that between 5 and 10 thousand tons of silver could potentially be recycled from retired solar panels by the year 2050.  But even the other materials contained in solar panels are well worth recovering if it can be done cost-effectively.

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New environmentally friendly solar panel recycling process helps recover valuable silver

Photo, posted November 22, 2008, courtesy of Oregon Department of Transportation via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Concrete And Carbon | Earth Wise

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After water, concrete is the world’s second most consumed material.  It is the cornerstone of modern infrastructure.  Its production accounts for 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions.  The carbon dioxide is a result of chemical reactions in its manufacture and from the energy required to fuel the reactions.

About half of the emissions associated with concrete come from burning fossil fuels to heat up the mixture of limestone and clay that ultimately becomes ordinary Portland cement.  These emissions could eventually be eliminated by using renewable-generated electricity to provide the necessary heat.  However, the other half of the emissions is inherent in the chemical process.

When the minerals are heated to temperatures above 2500 degrees Fahrenheit, a chemical reaction occurs producing a substance called clinker (which is mostly calcium silicates) and carbon dioxide.  The carbon dioxide escapes into the air.

Portland cement is then mixed with water, sand, and gravel to produce concrete.  The concrete is somewhat alkaline and naturally absorbs carbon dioxide albeit slowly.  Over time, these reactions weaken the concrete and corrode reinforcing rebar.

Researchers at MIT have discovered that the simple addition of sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda) to the concrete mixture accelerates the early-stage mineralization of carbon dioxide, enough to make a real dent in concrete’s carbon footprint.  In addition, the resulting concrete sets much more quickly.  It forms a new composite phase that doubles the mechanical performance of early-stage concrete.

The goal is to provide much greener, and possibly even carbon-negative construction materials, turning concrete from being a problem to part of a solution.

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New additives could turn concrete into an effective carbon sink

Photo, posted April 4, 2009, courtesy of PSNH via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Electric Cars Getting Cheaper | Earth Wise

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A sticking point for buying electric cars has always been that they are typically more expensive than equivalent gasoline-powered cars.  But increasing competition, government incentives, and falling prices for lithium and other battery materials is changing the equation.  In fact, the tipping point when electric cars are as cheap or even cheaper than internal combustion cars is likely to happen this year for many cars and, in fact, has already happened for some.

Battery production is ramping up for Tesla, General Motors, Ford, and others, creating cost savings from mass production. Companies manufacturing batteries in the United States are receiving government subsidies as part of a drive to establish a domestic supply chain and reduce dependence on China.  Before anyone cries foul, it should be noted that globally, oil companies received a trillion dollars in subsidies last year.  The Inflation Reduction Act is making it cheaper for automakers to build electric cars (provided they do it in the United States using US materials) and cheaper for consumers to buy them because of tax credits.

Multiple companies have lowered the price of their electric vehicles in recent months, including both the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y, which are the best-selling electric cars in the United States. GM’s electric Equinox crossover will start at about $30,000, which is still about $3,400 more than the gas-powered version.  But once the electric vehicle tax credit is figured in, it will actually be cheaper.

Electric cars are already cheaper to own and operate because of the much lower cost of powering with electricity instead of gas as well as the greatly reduced maintenance costs for the vehicles.  Once the purchase price of these cars is less than that of gas-powered cars, the economics becomes a no-brainer.

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Electric Vehicles Could Match Gasoline Cars on Price This Year

Photo, posted May 11, 2021, courtesy of Chris Yarzab via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Self-Deicing Roads | Earth Wise

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Driving on snowy or icy roads can be pretty dangerous.  That is why roads are salted or coated with sand to provide traction in icy weather.  But excessive use of these substances is bad for the environment and sometimes a storm will blow in before the roads can be coated.

In a paper published in the American Chemical Society Journal ACS Omega, researchers in China describe a method of adding microcapsules filled with a chloride-free salt mixture to the asphalt with which roads are paved.  The idea is to provide the road itself with long-term snow melting capabilities.

The researchers prepared a sodium-acetate salt and combined it with a surfactant, silicon dioxide, sodium bicarbonate, and blast furnace slag, which is a waste product from power plants.  The substances were reduced to a fine powder and then coated with a polymer solution to form tiny microcapsules.  The microcapsules were then used to replace some of the standard mineral filler in asphalt.

Lab experiments showed that the special additive lowered the freezing point of water on the asphalt to -6 degrees Fahrenheit.   The researchers estimated that a 2-inch-thick layer of the anti-icing asphalt would be effective at melting snow for seven or eight years.  A real-world pilot test of the coating on a highway offramp showed that it melted snow that fell on the road whereas an uncoated road required snow removal operations.

According to the researchers, given the cost of materials used for the coating and its potential useful lifetime, it could be a practical and economic enhancement for wintertime snow and ice removal.  Maybe we’ll someday have roads that can fairly often deice themselves. 

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Keeping drivers safe with a road that can melt snow, ice on its own

Photo, posted April 8, 2007, courtesy of the Oregon Department of Transportation via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Fertilizing The Ocean | Earth Wise

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There are a variety of schemes for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  Some require advanced and generally not-very-well developed technology.  Others, such as planting vast numbers of trees, are nature-based but are daunting with respect to the scale to which they need to take place in order to be truly effective.

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington have been examining the scientific evidence for seeding the oceans with iron-rich engineered fertilizer in order to feed phytoplankton.  Phytoplankton are microscopic plants that are a key part of the ocean ecosystem.

Phytoplankton take up carbon dioxide as they grow.  In nature, nutrients from the land end up in the ocean through rivers and from blowing dust.  These nutrients fertilize the plankton.  The idea is to augment these existing processes to increase the growth of phytoplankton.  As they eventually die, they sink deep into the ocean, taking the excess carbon with them.


The researchers argue that engineered nanoparticles could provide highly controlled nutrition that is specifically tuned for different ocean environments.  Surface coatings could help the particles attach to plankton.  Some could be engineered with light-absorbing properties, allowing plankton to consume and use more carbon dioxide.

Analysis of over 100 published studies showed that numerous non-toxic, abundant, and easy-to-create metal-oxygen materials could safely enhance plankton growth.  According to the researchers, the proposed fertilization would simply speed up a natural process that already sequesters carbon in a form that could remove it from the atmosphere for thousands of years.  They argue that given the current trends in the climate, time is of the essence for taking action.

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Fertilizing the Ocean to Store Carbon Dioxide

Photo, posted August 2, 2007, courtesy of Kevin McCarthy via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Windows To Cool Buildings | Earth Wise

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About 15% of global energy consumption is for cooling buildings.  Because of this, there is an ever- growing need for technologies that can more efficiently cool buildings.   Researchers at Notre Dame University have used advanced computing technology and artificial intelligence to design a transparent window coating that is able to lower the temperature inside buildings without using any energy.

The idea is to create a coating that blocks the sun’s ultraviolet and near-infrared light, which are parts of the solar spectrum that otherwise pass through glass and help to heat an enclosed room.  Cooling needs can be reduced further if the coating can radiate heat from the surface of the window so it can pass through the atmosphere into space.  Designing a coating that does both of those things simultaneously while transmitting visible light is difficult.  Coatings should not interfere with the view out the window.

The Notre Dame researchers used advanced computer modeling to create a so-called transparent radiative cooler that meets these goals.  The coating consists of alternating layers of common materials like silicon dioxide, silicon nitride, and aluminum oxide or titanium dioxide on top of a glass base and topped with a film of polydimethylsiloxane.  The computing method was able to optimize this structure far faster and better than conventional design techniques.

The researchers say that in hot, dry cities, the coating could potentially reduce cooling energy consumption by 31% compared with conventional windows.  The same materials could be used in other applications, such as car and truck windows.  In addition, the quantum computing-enabled optimization method used for this work could be used to design other composite materials.

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Clear window coating could cool buildings without using energy

Photo, posted September 6, 2015, courtesy of Robert Otmn via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Carbon Storage In Harvested Wood | Earth Wise

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Trees are an exceedingly important carbon sink on our planet.  For this reason, deforestation is a major contributor to climate change.  But when trees are harvested for wood products like lumber, much of the carbon in that wood continues to be stored.  Even when a wood product is discarded at the end of its useful life, it can keep storing carbon.

Over 90% of new single-family homes in the U.S. are built with wood.  Each year, about 400,000 homes, apartment buildings, and other housing units are lost to floods and other natural disasters.  Others fall apart from decay or are torn down to be replaced with newer structures.  Given how much carbon is stored in houses, it is important to understand what the future trajectory of residential structures will be.

A new study by the USDA Forest Service published in the journal PLOS ONE looks at the future of harvested wood products in residential structures.  According to the study, wood products in these structures will continue to increase the country’s carbon storage for the next 50 years. 

Even after residential structures reach the end of their useful life and much of the materials end up in landfills (which is typical in this country), the wood products do not immediately release their carbon.  It may take decades for that to happen.

The study looked at various scenarios for future home construction.  Although housing starts are projected to decline in the future, residential housing and the need to maintain existing structures are projected to continue to increase carbon storage in wood products for the next several decades.

The role of trees as a carbon sink does not end when they are harvested for their wood.

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Carbon Storage in Harvested Wood Products

Photo, posted January 27, 2022, courtesy of Luke McKernan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Solar-Powered Desalination | Earth Wise

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About two-thirds of humanity is affected by water shortages.  In the developing world, many areas with water shortages also lack dependable sources of electricity.  Given this situation, there is widespread research on using solar heat to desalinate seawater.  To date, many approaches to this face problems with fouling of equipment with salt buildup.  Tackling this issue has proven to add complexity and expense to solar desalination techniques.

A team of researchers from MIT and China has recently developed a solution to the problem of salt accumulation that is more efficient than previous methods and is less expensive as well.

Previous attempts at solar desalination have relied on some sort of wick to draw saline water through the device.  These wicks are vulnerable to salt accumulation and are difficult to clean.  The MIT-Chinese team has developed a wick-free system instead.  It is a layered system with dark material at the top to absorb the sun’s heat, and then a thin layer of water that sits above a perforated layer of plastic material.  That layer sits atop a deep reservoir of salty water such as a tank or pond.  The researchers determined the optimal size for the holes in the perforated plastic.

The 2.5 millimeter holes are large enough to allow for convective circulation between the warmer upper layer of water above the perforated layer and the colder reservoir below.  That circulation naturally draws the salt from the thin layer above down into the much larger body of water below.

The system utilizes low-cost, easy to use materials.  The next step is to scale up the devices into a size that has practical applications.  According to the team, just a one-square-meter system could provide a family’s daily needs for drinking water.

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Solar-powered system offers a route to inexpensive desalination

Photo, posted February 13, 2017, courtesy of Jacob Vanderheyden via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Capturing Carbon Dioxide With Plastic | Earth Wise

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The world is awash in both waste plastic and in carbon dioxide emissions.   Researchers at Rice University have discovered a chemical technique for making waste plastic into an effective carbon dioxide absorbent for industry.

Chemists at Rice reported in the journal ACS Nano that heating plastic waste in the presence of potassium acetate produces particles with nanometer-scale pores that trap carbon dioxide molecules.   According to the researchers, these particles could be used to remove CO2 from the flue gas streams of power plants.

Significant sources of CO2 emissions like power plant exhaust stacks could be fitted with this waste-plastic-derived material to absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide that would otherwise enter the atmosphere. 

The Rice University process is an enhancement to the current process of pyrolyzing waste plastic – that is, breaking it down in the presence of heat.  By pyrolyzing plastic in the presence of potassium acetate, porous particles are formed that can hold up to 18% of their own weight in carbon dioxide.

According to the researchers, the cost of capturing carbon from a power plant would be $21 a ton, which is far less expensive than existing energy-intensive processes used to pull carbon dioxide from natural gas feeds.

The sorbent material can be reused.  Heating it to about 167 degrees Fahrenheit releases trapped carbon dioxide from the pores and regenerates about 90% of the material’s binding sites.

The Rice process may represent a much better way to capture carbon dioxide from power plant exhaust stacks.  It could be a way to make use of one environmental problem – waste plastic – to deal with another one.

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Treated plastic waste good at grabbing carbon dioxide

Photo, posted April 19, 2021, courtesy of Ivan Radic via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A New “Wonder Material” | Earth Wise

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Graphene is a form of carbon made of single-atom-thick layers. It has many remarkable properties and researchers around the world continue to investigate its use in multiple applications.

In 2019, a new material composed of single-atom-thick layers was produced for the first time.  It is phosphorene nanoribbons or PNRs, which are ribbon-like strands of two-dimensional phosphorous.  These materials are tiny ribbons that can be a single atomic layer thick and less than 100 atoms wide but millions of atoms long.  They are comparable in aspect ratio to the cables that span the Golden Gate Bridge.   Theoretical studies have predicted how PNR properties could benefit all sorts of devices, including batteries, biomedical sensors, thermoelectric devices, nanoelectronics, and quantum computers. 

As an example, nanoribbons have great potential to create faster-charging batteries because they can hold more ions than can be stored in conventional battery materials.

Recently, for the first time, a team of researchers led by Imperial College London and University College London researchers has used PNRs to significantly improve the efficiency of a device.  The device is a new kind of solar cell, and it represents the first demonstration that this new wonder material might actually live up to its hype.

The researchers incorporated PNRs into solar cells made from perovskites.  The resultant devices had an efficiency above 21%, which is comparable to traditional silicon solar cells.  Apart from the measured results, the team was able to experimentally verify the mechanism by which the PNRs enhanced the improved efficiency.

Further studies using PNRs in devices will allow researchers to discover more mechanisms for how they can improve performance.

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‘Wonder material’ phosphorene nanoribbons live up to hype in first demonstration

Photo, posted October 6, 2010, courtesy of Alexander AlUS / CORE-Materials via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Turning Atmospheric Carbon Into Useful Materials | Earth Wise

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Plants have the ability to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and incorporate it into leaves, fruits, wood, and other plant materials.  This beneficial process is mostly temporary, as much of this carbon dioxide from plant matter ends up back in the atmosphere through decomposition, or even burning.

Researchers at the Salk Institute have proposed a more permanent fate for captured carbon by turning plant matter into a valuable industrial material called silicon carbide.

In a recent study published in the journal RSC Advances, Salk scientists transformed tobacco and corn husks into silicon carbide and evaluated and quantified the benefits of the process.

The researchers used a previously reported method to transform plant matter into silicon carbide in three stages and carefully tracked the carbon utilization at each stage.

Stage one is growing the plants.  They used tobacco from seed, chosen for its short growing season.  Then the harvested plants are frozen, ground into a powder, and treated with chemicals including a silicon-containing compound.  Finally, the powder is subjected to a high-temperature process resulting in the production of silicon carbide.

Their analysis showed that much of the carbon sequestered by growing the plants could be preserved through the full process and the amount of energy required for the production of the silicon carbide (mostly from the high-temperature process) is comparable to current manufacturing processes for the material.

Permanently sequestering carbon from agricultural waste products by incorporating it into a valuable industrial material would be a valuable addition to strategies for reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

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Transforming Atmospheric Carbon Into Industrially Useful Materials

Photo, posted August 3, 2013, courtesy of AJ Garrison via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Better Solar Evaporator | Earth Wise

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Water security is a serious global problem.  Nearly 1.5 billion people – including almost half a billion children – live in areas of high or extremely high water vulnerability.  Less than 3% of the world’s water is fresh and demand for it is rising with increasing population growth, urbanization, and growing water needs from a range of sectors.

Researchers at the University of South Australia have developed a promising new technique that could help reduce or eliminate water stress for millions of people.  The technique uses highly efficient solar evaporation to obtain fresh water from seawater, brackish water, or even contaminated water.   According to the researchers, their technique can deliver enough daily fresh drinking water for a family of four from just one square meter of source water.

Solar evaporation has been the focus of a great deal of effort in recent years, but it has generally been found to be too inefficient to be practically useful.  The new technique overcomes those inefficiencies and can deliver fresh water at a fraction of the cost of existing technologies like reverse osmosis.

The system utilizes a highly efficient photothermal structure that sits on the surface of a water source and converts sunlight to heat, focusing energy precisely on the surface to rapidly evaporate the uppermost portion of the liquid.  The technique prevents any loss of solar energy and even draws additional energy from the bulk water and surrounding environment.

The system is built entirely from simple, everyday materials that are low cost, sustainable, and easily obtainable.

The technology has the potential to provide a long-term clean water solution to people who can’t afford other systems, and these are the places where such solutions are most needed.

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Sunlight to solve the world’s clean water crisis

Photo, posted November 13, 2016, courtesy of Steve Austin via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Cleaner Water Using Corn | Earth Wise

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Corn is the largest agricultural crop in the U.S., and it is also one of the most wasteful.  About half of the harvest ends up as stover – corn stalks, leaves, husks, and cobs – once the kernels are used for food.

Corn stover has relatively few commercial or industrial uses.  It can be used to produce biofuel, but that is not very energy efficient.  It is sometimes used as a low-quality livestock feed as well.  Mostly, it is just burned if it is used at all.

Researchers at the University of California Riverside have developed an energy-efficient way to make good use of stover by transforming it into activated carbon for use in water treatment.

Activated carbon – often called activated charcoal – is an organic material that is specially treated to contain millions of microscopic pores that make it highly absorbent.  It has many industrial uses, the most common of which is for filtering pollutants out of drinking water.  Most household water filters such as Brita filters as well as the ones built into refrigerators make use of activated carbon.

The Riverside researchers explored methods for producing activated carbon from charred corn stover and found that processing the material with hot compressed water – a process known as hydrothermal carbonization – produced highly absorbent activated carbon with superior properties compared to material produced by slow pyrolysis, where corn stover is charred at increasing temperatures over a long period of time.

According to the researchers, it is important to create approaches that convert waste into high-value materials, fuels, and chemicals in order to create new value streams and eliminate the environmental harm that comes from a so-called “take-make-dispose” economic model.

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Cleaner Water Through Corn

Photo, posted September 15, 2010, courtesy of the United Soybean Board / the Soybean Checkoff via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Red Hot Chili Solar Panels | Earth Wise

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The majority of solar panels in use today are made from either single-crystal or polycrystalline silicon, the same stuff used to make the ubiquitous chips in computers, cell phones, and countless other devices.  In addition, a growing fraction of solar panels utilize thin-film technology, which offers cost and flexibility advantages.

Monocrystal silicon still provides the highest efficiency and longest lifespan in commercially available panels, but the lower costs and some other features of thin-film solar panels are growing that market over time.

More recently, perovskite solar cell technology has been a source of great interest in the research community.  Perovskites are a class of minerals with a specific crystalline structure that already have uses in various applications.  As a solar cell material, perovskites offer the potential for converting more sunlight to electricity, being manufactured far more cheaply using no exotic or expensive materials, being more defect-tolerant, as well as a having number of other advantages.  They also have the potential for having very high efficiency. 

Recently, a group of researchers in China and Sweden published results of studies demonstrating that the addition of a novel ingredient has increased the efficiency of perovskite solar cells to nearly 22%, which is better than most commercial silicon solar cells.  The ingredient is capsaicin, the chemical that gives chili peppers their spicy sting.  Adding capsaicin expands the grains that make up the active material of the solar cell, allowing the more effective transport of electricity. 

Why did the researchers think of adding the active ingredient of hot peppers to a solar cell in the first place?  So far, they aren’t saying.

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Solar panels capture more sunlight with capsaicin – the chemical that makes chili peppers spicy

Photo, posted August 16, 2019, courtesy of Pedro via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Self-Watering Soil | Earth Wise

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Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have created a new type of soil that can pull water from the air and distribute it to plants.  Such soil has the potential to expand the map of farmable land to previously inhospitable places as well as to reduce water use in agriculture in an era of growing droughts.

The team’s atmospheric water irrigation system makes use of super-moisture-absorbent gels to capture water from the air.  When they are heated to a high enough temperature, the gels release the water, making it available to plants.

The gels in the soil pull water out of the air during cooler, more humid periods at night and when the sun heats the soil during the day, the water-containing gels release their contents into the soil.

Each gram of soil can extract about 3-4 grams of water.  Depending on the specific crop, somewhere between a couple of ounces and 2 pounds of the soil can provide enough water to irrigate a square yard of farmland.

Experiments on the soil found that it retains water better than the sandy soils found in dry areas and needs much less water to grow plants.

In one experiment, radish plants germinated in the soil all survived a 14-day period without any irrigation beyond the initial watering when they were planted.  Radish plants in ordinary sandy soil irrigated for the first four days of the experiments lasted no more than two days further without watering.

The Austin group has been developing gel-polymer materials that work like super-sponges for two years.  These materials extract large amounts of water from the ambient air, clean it, and release it when heated with solar energy.

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Self-Watering Soil Could Transform Farming

Photo, posted October 21, 2020, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture via Flickr. USDA Media by Lance Cheung.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Toughest Beetle Of Them All | Earth Wise

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In 2015, UC Riverside materials scientists placed a mottled black beetle in a parking lot and ran it over with a Toyota Camry.  Twice.  Crushed beneath the wheels of a 3,500-pound sedan, the inch-long insect made it through without a scratch.

For the past five years, a group of scientists have been studying this remarkable bug, which has the splendid name of the diabolical ironclad beetle. Using a combination of advanced microscopy, mechanical testing, and computer simulations, the researchers have figured out the secret of this beetle’s crush resistance.

The beetle’s super-toughness lies in two armorlike structures called elytra that meet in a line, called a suture, running the length of the abdomen.  The suture acts like a jigsaw puzzle.  It connects various exoskeletal blades – the puzzle pieces – in the abdomen under the elytra.   These structural components can act in different ways.  The interconnecting blades lock to prevent themselves from pulling out of the suture.  The suture and blades delaminate, leading to a graceful deformation rather than catastrophic failure.  These strategies dissipate energy to circumvent fracturing.

The researchers found that the diabolical ironclad beetle – just had to say that name again – can take on an applied force of about 150 newtons, a load at least 39,000 times its body weight.  (That’s the equivalent of a 150-pound person resisting the crush of about 25 blue whales).

An ongoing challenge for structural engineering is how to join together different materials without limiting their ability to support loads.  The strategies evolved in these beetles may be applicable in gas turbines of aircraft, for example, where metals and composite materials are joined together with mechanical fasteners.   We can learn things from the toughest beetle of them all.

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Diabolical ironclad beetles inspire tougher joints for engineering applications

Photo, posted April 9, 2017, courtesy of Vahe Martirosyan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Recycling Solar Panels | Earth Wise

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It is inevitable that the things we make and use eventually outlive their useful lives and become waste that we have to deal with.  Solar panels, despite their impressively long lifetime, can’t escape this general principle.   As pioneering solar panels near the end of their 30-year electronic lives, they could well become the world’s next big wave of e-waste.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, nearly 90 million tons of solar panels will have reached their end of life by the year 2050, resulting in about 7 million tons of new solar e-waste per year.

Solar photovoltaic deployment has grown at unprecedented rates in recent years.  The total global installed capacity is about 600 GW today; projections are that there will be 1,600 GW by 2030 and 4,500 GW by 2050.

Solar panels contain valuable materials, including silver and high-purity silicon.  But current recycling procedures are not cost-effective.   Only about 10% of panels are currently recycled in the U.S.   The rest go to landfills or are shipped overseas to become another country’s problem.

Before solar waste becomes a major problem, the industry needs to better address the issue.  Strategies include improving the design of panels to align with recycling capabilities as well as developing new recycling methods that can more efficiently extract and purify the valuable materials in the panels.  Industry researchers are also looking into ways to repair and resell panels that are still in good condition and to repurpose old panels for less demanding functions like e-bike charging stations and housing complexes.

Like most things, solar panels do fail over time and with a rapidly growing number of them in the world, we need to figure out how to avoid them adding to the world’s problems.

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Solar Panels Are Starting to Die. Will We be Able to Recycle the E-Waste?

Photo, posted January 6, 2006, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

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